Conspiracy Theories, Skepticism, and Critical Thinking

Engaging with ideas is beyond the capabilities of conspiracy theorists, that’s why they are conspiracy theorists. They’ll give lip service to wanting engagement but in the end they just have their misdirection, ad hominem, and non-sequiturs. This weeks’ section is all three. Anyway Socialism/Anarchism is bad, so are Socialists/Anarchists. We have been reading a chapter that is supposed to be about the development of Socialist/Anarchist movements throughout the 19 th century but she really hasn’t delivered. What we have gotten are a list of petty squabbles, some gossip, and a list of bad things that her alleged enemies have done. She doesn’t address the arguments of these movements. It’s easier to raise the ire of people by discussing how they killed the Tsar of Russia. The course of Socialism should take us to America, and it does for two sentences when she mentions that American Anarchists led by Johann Most “ gave evidence of their presence by a dynamite explosion in the Haymark...

 Many of us took hobbies during the year of the pandemic, then decided that these hobbies were too much work, and went back to the conspiracy spiral on social media. Last week we met a person who did much of the same thing, Leopold Engel. Engel was going to restart the actual Illuminati, and like a person who doesn’t understand how difficult being a Dungeon Master actually is, abandoned the project pretty early. Webster is trying to weave her story, but at this point I don’t think she remembers what it is supposed to be. Engel’s group is out but Webster needs to carry it forward. So she changes gears giving us the “Philadelphes” group which was, possibly, the name of a Masonic lodge that used to be count Gracchus Babeuf as a member but not has a branch in London. Of course, the word “Philadelphes” just means brotherly love and is such an obvious name for a fraternal organization that it is almost a cliché. She quotes at length from an article in the New York World. This article isn...

  It’s been a while since we’ve heard from the Illuminati. For the last several posts we’ve been dealing with in-fighting between Socialists and Anarchists with the occasional Weishaupt reference tossed in. Mostly, the story has been about the failure of the Socialists to organize properly; but here we are, back to the original point of this book. “ The facts about this resuscitated order are very difficult to ascertain, for naturally they have been carefully kept from the public, and as in the case of the earlier Illuminati of 1776 every effort has been made by interested writers to conceal the existence of the society, or it must be admitted, to represent it as a perfectly innocuous and unimportant association.” The ultimate contradiction in conspiracy theorizing of the super secret societies is that they are successful at employing their plans (provided you excuse the fact that we do not live in their alleged utopia) but absolutely miserable at keeping it a secret. For peopl...

We’re done with Russia, so no more of that weird racism—we’ll just have to settle for Webster’s normal brand. It’s 1878 and she claims that “ Western Europe experienced a repercussion of the Russian Terror, and the four leading Anarchists, Kropotkine, Cafiero, Malatesta, and Brousse, organized a worldwide scheme of violence described by them as the ‘Propaganda of the Deed.” I don’t think she knows what ‘repercussion’ means. Does she mean to say that the scheme of the four is in direct response to the Russian Tsar’s clamp down of the Russian citizens? I am really asking that question because there is no context for her claim. It’s the first sentence of the paragraph that opens the section. We just have to move past it I guess. The end of the paragraph implies a good old fashioned false flag. The German Emperor Wilhelm I (which Webster writes as “William” for what I assume are racist reasons) was the target of two assassination attempts by anarchists Hodel and Nobling. Webster tell...

 One of my favorite parts of conspiracy theory books, that I’ve learned over the last several years, is when they get into economics because they really don’t understand economics. Conspiracy theorists understand very little about the world normally and the better conspiracy theorists stay in their lane. For some reason that I have yet to fathom they feel the need to delve into economics. Webster’s book, as we have seen, is not coherent when she tries to explain economics it gets worse. During her discussion of the French Revolution, she tried to disparage the revolutionary government because the free enterprise system wouldn’t keep the tailors employed as they no longer had aristocrats to make clothes for. When the revolutionary government set up work houses, she said that this was bad because workers should be able to find their own employment and not rely on the state…unlike those tailors who relied on the king which was the state at the time. I don’t know if she doesn’t under...

Webster has established that she has a very low opinion of the Russian people. Not that she opposes Russia the state, but that the Russian people are prone to violence and drunkenness, and incapable of modern civilization. Hey, her words not mine. When we keep this mind, we recognize “ the fearful danger of taking from him the only restraints he knew—respect for God and the Czar” What follows that line is one of the more honest arguments a fascist conspiracy theorist like Nesta Webster has ever offered. She asks “ Was the Imperial Government, then, to tolerate the campaign of insubordination and of militant atheism conducted by the Nihilists from 1866 onwards?” I dislike rhetorical questions as an argument tactic which makes reading these books especially frustrating. Here Webster could make the same point by not phrasing it like a coward, instead of asking she should write, “ The Imperial Government does not have to tolerate a campaign of insubordination and militant atheism by th...